SIM ANT v1.9

[Moderator]

Craka_J: Not too bad of a map. I'd say it's decent. Approved.

 

[wereguy2]

Great map, lots of teamwork required. I found it extremely fun.
5/5

 

[Reaper51]

I love this map, its one of my favorite mini game maps along with ninja vs samurai.

 

[Navu]

Loved the old Sim Ant as I was playing it in black and white.
Anyway, I think this adaption is really intresting and quite fun to play.
For me, the ideas are brilliant but the gameplay is not fully there yet.

General thoughts:
I'd prefer a bigger outdoor area, though I can see how this might be a bit cumbersome to fix. Maybe just extending the map vertically to the north would be the easiest and changing positions of outdoor structures/holes accordingly.

Another though is that I wonder if you'd feel like making the ant holes randomly placed instead of static, or even better that they are created/dug by the queen at the start of the game (and later for whatever tactical reason). I'd prefer this to always knowing that the enemy is in one of the two holes always at the same spots.

Problems:
The times we've played with a spider-player, the game has been in his/her control. Even if it would only have the slightest impact, it's still there. Beyond that, it can't win and has no incentive to balance things. I don't like the idea of a player/team like that so I'm glad it's possible to close the slot.

Without spider:
The games tend to be very short. That's not really a problem in itself, it's just that it's mostly over before players get to have fun with the advanced features. One team has alot more soldiers (the other barely any), they go down in the other team's hole (way too easily) and kills queen. There hasn't been enough time for the other teams worker to put up a useful defense.
Even the times where both teams seem to have the same amount of soldiers, it tends to end the same way after the first battle, where one team has no soldiers left and the other has just enough to end it early.

I personally think it would be great if something(s) were done to prolong the game even when one team is outnumbered in soldiers.
Maybe battles in bases can be tilted in favour of the defending team, more than it already is with the worker towers.
There can be a population penalty like with income in wc3.
Queen mana re-generation could be slower the more units the team has, forcing her to eat more and use the mana regen items more.
Hostile creatures (like beetles but not them since they are too big) could sometimes attack-move to both teams' queens, thus slightly damaging their defenses/soldiers. This would also force teams to always have some soldiers left at home instead of sending everything to other team's hole - thus benefiting the team being attacked in their base. The hostile creatures could be the spiders minions as a non-player force in the map. As for the big spider, it could just be creature sticking close to it's home, there to kill for a small bonus/reward and perhaps to temporarily stop spider attacks on queen bases.

With spider:
While the games can live on for quite some time, with the spider killing off units on the stronger team, I feel it ruins the satisfaction and excitement for both of the teams. I don't like coming back from an obvious loss only because the spider realised it's time he/she let the other team suffer a bit. Neither do I like winning because the other team lost a bunch of units, and it wasn't even my/our teams doing.
And those are problems in a game with a somewhat balance-aiming spider-player. The majority of our spider-games have ended with spider-player doing something similar to killing of All workers for one team, or sitting on top of an ant hole (I know you can dig to another exit and use that instead, though that doesn't always work well with the automoving fungus/food collectors)

Anyway, just wanted to leave something possibly constructive for you, to bring up things that you might find useful when working/fine-tuning the map.
I'm not going to rave about how cool all the things in the map are that I didn't mention.

PS: Thanks for putting out one of the funniest wc3 maps I've ever seen.

 

[taleb_awad]

spider

first i disagree with u about spider spdier is good to prevent pro guys to kill noobs too fast but if u make him a little weaker no bad but pls make to him 1 slot so he can use tomes would be also cool to evolve babies but though make only like 3 babies can become huge spdier extend only 3 heros would be good so they are kill able at start in end the aren't and fix the ending he dosen't get win lsoe ondation fix that pls.

edit : when i said 3 spiders i ment 3 players get at start weak spider stronger etc then when he's lvl 10 to be able make baby spiders .

 

[taleb_awad]

no reward for spider !!

lol u said spider to drop reward he already does cuz once 1 of my friends was spider cuz im too known to spider i knew when kill killed tada he droped like 15 food item

 

[PartumCreed]

This map is amazing!
It would be great to see it updated for the Warcraft patch 1.29.2

• Very professional terraining
• Truly unique gameplay where a player of each team is a part of one 'colony'.
• Long & intriguing gameplay
• No computer AI for none of the teams.

 

[Neurax]

This map is amazing!

Well, yes, I agree. I still love it, despite its flaws.

It would be great to see it updated

Well, I tried to edit it - just to fix the bugs.
But it is protected, so, I had no success.

Also, there is version 2.1 somewhere on the internet. But it has some error that does not allow it to properly launch (in the map selection screen you see an empty space where players should be shown). I was able to open it in the editor and see the changes, but again - not able to save.

I tried searching for 2.0, but (I think, don't remember it all) author lost it and any unprotected copies he had. So, he wasn't able to fix it or make any new updates.

 

[ILikeMacNCheeze]

Ants in my Pants!
This game is so dank that beating Black Ants makes you racist.